Back in 2016, singer-songwriter Rachael Yamagata enlisted actress Allison Janney to star as a sad, sexy clown in the video for “Let Me Be Your Girl,” one of the standout tracks from Yamagata’s album, “Tightrope Walker.”

Yamagata had heard through a mutual friend that Janney was a fan. Another friend, actor Josh Radnor (“How I Met Your Mother”), knew Janney and agreed to direct. “She was an absolute star,” Yamagata says of Janney, who was nominated for an Oscar hours before this interview. “She was almost a one-take performer and gave so much weight to that song that I didn’t even know was there.”

Janney’s presence drew attention to the sturdy and lovely “Tightrope Walker,” Yamagata’s fourth full-length release, which she financed through crowdfunding. Yamagata, raised in the Washington, D.C., area and currently living in Woodstock, N.Y., got her start in Chicago, where she fell in love with, and soon joined, local party-funk legend Bumpus while at Northwestern University.

Days from launching a retrospective “Storytellers”-type tour, Yamagata got on the phone to talk touring, Springsteen and Tony Robbins.

Some edited highlights:

A solo career was not necessarily inevitable.

I didn’t even think of music as a career. We were just having so much fun. I think I was in that band (Bumpus) for six or seven years, and it didn’t occur to me to pursue solo music at all. I would write songs on the side, but they’d be 15-minute ballad songs that had no place in that band. But they were really encouraging, specifically James Johnston, the lead singer. Bumpus was my backing band when I did my first showcase for a label, so there was a lot of support there. The solo stuff turning into a career happened very unexpectedly. It wasn’t something I’d envisioned.

Her tour is a gamble.

I remember seeing Bruce Springsteen’s “VH1 Storytellers” hour and being really compelled by just him playing and cracking jokes and telling stories to the audience and showing a really (different) side of his work. This show is going to be unique because it’s just me, and it’s going to be a storytelling, one-on-one vibe with the audience. I’ve re-envisioned some songs; there’s a visual component to the set that, if it works, will be brilliant. If it doesn’t, it will be a big lesson.

She’s still not sure whether it’s going to work.

I question if this is the dumbest idea I’ve ever had. Every day, I’m listening to so much Tony Robbins, you can’t even imagine, every “Cast your fears aside” (pep talk). I have no idea what I’m doing. I’m just doing it.

Allison Stewart is a freelance writer.